Trivializing

Description

When we are faced with a disappointment over something that is important to
us, we are faced with the problem of having our expectations and predictions
dashed. We may even have told other people about it beforehand, making it doubly
embarrassing that we have not gained what we expected.

As a response, we make light of the situation, telling ourselves (and often
other people) that it is not that important anyway, thus trivializing what was
previously important.

One way that we trivialize is to make something a joke, laughing it off.

Example

A girl rejects the advances of a boy. He tells his friends that she isn't
that pretty anyway.

A friend trips up and falls on his face. He gets up laughing.

A person in a meeting is faced with a powerful counter-argument. They
trivialize it by saying that it is nothing new.

I lose a lot of money gambling. I tell myself that I didn't need it anyway.

Discussion

The size of discomfort is proportional to the size of the problem.
Trivializing makes small something that is really big, and hence allows me to
ignore it.

This is a common mechanism that is socially acceptable in many situations,
particularly when we are applying it to ourselves, where it may appear to be
modesty or not taking oneself too seriously.

Trivializing may also be used as an attack, making small something that
others find important. This is used when that something makes us feel
uncomfortable in some way such that we feel unable to cope with it just now.

So what?

Help others to cope by making light of problems -- though beware of this
appearing that you are using trivialization to attack rather than help them.

If you are helping them develop, you can
question and
probe why they made
light of the situation. You can also encourage a person to do something that they previously thought
difficult by making light of it.